I included Icy Veins in the list because it's a cooldown, just as Combustion is. Rawr currently does not model Mirror Image, so I didn't include that. And generally people use Mirror Image at different times, not necessarily stacking with anything.

Yes Ataxus, I have looked at each one of the scenarios you listed. Optimizer is great for setting things up, but it can overlook things, and does.

The first thing I do before running optimizer is to set my gems. I use the Mass Gem Replacement for this. The Gemming paterns would look like this:

#1 , , , #2 , , , #3 , , , #4 , , ,

You can also add in if you want. Next run Optimizer. I leave Override Regem/Reenchant unchecked, because the wording is incredibly confusing and I have no idea what those two options are actually saying. I also haven't noticed any difference between leaving them checked or unchecked. After that's done, make sure all of your enchants are properly set. That means no Mighty Spellpower on your offhand, and no scopes on your wands. Make sure it didn't load two Illustration of the Dragon Soul (and make sure it's at 200SP) for trinkets, or two Signet of Manifested Pain for rings.

Make sure your waist items don't have "extra" gems on them. For instance, if you added a gem slot to a waist item to account for Eternal Belt Buckle, and put a gem into it, then updated the item from Wowhead/Armory after Extra Socket feature was added, the gem slot will be removed, but the gem will not be removed. This 'phantom' gem will affect your DPS.

The next thing I do is look at the Direct Upgrades list. If you have Runed Dragon's Eye in multiple items, it will list these as upgrades, but because you can only have 3 of these gems, they obviously aren't upgrades, so ignore them.

And yes Unleash, I do not believe there is any possible combination of equipment that nullifies that 4-piece T7 bonus.

I included Icy Veins in the list because it's a cooldown, just as Combustion is. Rawr currently does not model Mirror Image, so I didn't include that. And generally people use Mirror Image at different times, not necessarily stacking with anything.

He was referring to the fact you listed Icy Veins under the cooldown section of the FB spec, even though FB spec does not contain Icy Veins.

Also, a little off topic, but are you supposed to Potion of Speed instead of Potion of Wild Magic? I thought Wild Magic ended up being better because of our 2 gcd spells, but then again ignoring them with speed pot might outweigh it

Edit: On the same note, shouldn't the haste soft cap be considered in gear selection? (<1 sec gcd affecting scorch, LB, and pyro, w/ or w/o lust)

Latest dev. build of Rawr already has Rune of Razorice modeled, it's roughly 5% increase in FFB dps spec. FFB + razorice is above Fireball build not including Focus Magic of another mage, if you model for 2 Fireball mages then they are around 2% above FFB.

Razorice is 5% Frostdamage only. This increases DPS of the FFB-Build by ~3,25% (5% of 65% of your damage), pushing FFB from 5671 DPS to 5855 DPS.

And if I turn off Focus Magic for Fireball I get nearly identical DPS for FFB and FB, just as Manly said somewhere. I'm not sure if I really want to trade 3% Crit against the superior DPM and AoE-DPS of FFB.

Latest dev. build of Rawr already has Rune of Razorice modeled, it's roughly 5% increase in FFB dps spec. FFB + razorice is above Fireball build not including Focus Magic of another mage, if you model for 2 Fireball mages then they are around 2% above FFB.

When comparing specs, you should almost always check off Focus Magic for fire whether or not there will be a second mage. The fact is that your own 3% buff is going somewhere in the raid, so you can't ignore that. The only things that I see that FFB has going for it is the burst control with IV or possibly the DPM in fights where evocation is difficult to pull off effectively.

After some troubleshooting, I was able to mirror your results with a difference of ~2 dps (5669.38). I found out that using the optimizer with low thoroughness gave strange varying results; obviously because it only considers direct upgrades and not the possible EP values of all gear sets.

It seems that Alliance mages with Heroic Presence just switch out for with an increase in dps from 5669.38 to 5685.06 according to my results.

Rawr does appear to account for the haste cap with respect to GCD for FFB spell cycles, but not for FB.

For FFB spec, increasing amounts of haste result in more fight segments in which Rawr chooses a FFBScPyro spell cycle over FFBScLBPyro. In optimal gear, adding 100 haste rating drops LB during MF+Lust+IV+Potion of Speed. Adding 1000 haste drops LB during MF+Lust+IV.

Yet strangely, taking the same approach with a FB setup fails to yield such results - even adding 5000 haste rating does not result in LB being dropped from the spell cycle for any segment within the fight.

FB Optimal Gearset

This may be overly tangential assuming an exclusively ordinal focus on optimal gearsets, but I feel it's worth noting that FB spec can take the ideal FFB gearset, replace with , replace the 3 with 2 and 1 , and end up only 6 DPS behind the optimal FB gearset, which differs by 3 pieces - Heigan chest, Malygos belt, and T7.5 head - none of which an optimally geared FFB mage is likely to have picked up.

This point may be of interest to those who have already obtained the ideal FFB gearset and intend to switch to FB spec come 3.0.8, or to a more general audience given the nature of loot tables and RNG.

I have been unable to use rawr due to various reasons so far but im curious is there anything in rawr that gives values for each point of a stat for each spec, Im guessing is has these values since you are able to compute this gear optimisation, you should consider adding those values in the first post for each spec for people who have most of the best gear but are unable to get every piece of the optimal sets yet so they can work out themselves what is the best that they have available.

Also im not sure if its possible on rawr yet with the new arcane blast glyph and other things such as new talents since i am yet to see one but it would be interesting to see an optimal set for the http://talent.mmo-ch...ph=000000000000 57/3/11 arcane spec that is going to be decent next patch. I will keep checking back here in case someone does one.